PRE-READING WORKSHEET In this worksheet, we are going to develop and test your pre-reading skills. Instructions: Below you’ll find a sample text for you to pre-read quickly. As you go along, underline or highlight the words that jump out at you in the left hand column. Then, use the space provided on the right hand column to write down the questions or curiosities that were generated by the words that jumped out at you. When you complete the exercise, view the analysis and examples which follow. Chapter 1: My Story: How I Developed My Reading Strategy When I was a kid, my parents wanted me to become a chess champion or a math professor and did not allow me to read the books I loved, like science fiction and classics. This produced significant holes in my education, which started to hurt when I became 19 years old. A straight-A student in a prestigious university, I expected myself to know things. Yet, I failed simple trivia questions my less distinguished friends could answer from psychology and history. Something needed to be done, and I addressed the issue in my typical head-on fashion. After getting my first degree, I found too much time on my hands and enough money to buy any book I wanted, and I started reading – seriously reading. © 2017 SuperHuman Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. http://becomeasuperlearner.com 1 Since I the holes in my education included literature, history, and philosophy, I decided to fill them in. Eventually, as I gathered more information, my questions became more focused and the method could not satisfy me anymore. I started to work on my PhD and needed to read complex articles, which were just too boring to handle. I needed to look for information using this new search engine called Google (the year was 1999), and I needed to find basic principles which could explain and systematize the abundance of seemingly unconnected stuff I learned. I went through the articles I had already read, until one of them interested me sufficiently to dive in. Then, I would “dive in” and reread the entire article. I met Anna the year I finished my PhD. She explained what she does, which is teach speedreading and comprehension. I told her I tried to do this myself, it did not work, and I did not believe in what she was doing. Needless to say, she had other assets that caught my attention, and it was not very long until we were married. Anna explained with the new method she teaches I would read much faster and remember EVERYTHING, no matter how boring or outdated and for as long as I needed to remember it. After approximately 10 weeks of training with Anna, I graduated the course (1000 wpm 80% retention). I still felt I read very slowly, simply the timers did not to work properly when I was reading. I © 2017 SuperHuman Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. http://becomeasuperlearner.com 2 decided I should speed up a notch. To keep up with people around me, I needed to read a massive amount of articles. I was focusing on articles and details I could reuse in my future work. Currently, I am reading at approximately 3000 wpm with approximately 80% retention using several proprietary methods. Here is what I learned from years of training: (1) Each period of life comes with unique challenges. As an effective tool to address these challenges, a reading strategy needs to be adapted. (2) How we learn is a matter of motivation, much more than the methods we use. (3) It is OK to leave gaps, or even huge holes in our reading, as long as we come back and fix them when we are ready. The moral of the story is I was able to fill in the gaps in my education, married a wonderful woman and together we continue to help others become SuperLearners. With the above principles in mind, the KeyToStudy method has grown and changed through the years to meet the challenges of an ever-changing society. Excerpt from “ The Key to Study Skills ” by Lev & Anna Goldentouch. © 2017 SuperHuman Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. http://becomeasuperlearner.com 3 EXAMPLES & ANALYSIS In prereading, there are no “right or wrong” answers; different things will interest different people. However, in the following examples, you will find some sample words we’ve selected, and Anna’s explanation of why some are better than others, as well as some sample questions you could generate from them. Items we notice Explanations Chapter 1: My Story: How I Developed My Reading Strategy When I was a kid, my parents wanted me to become a chess champion or a math professor and did not allow me to read the books I loved, like science fiction and classics. This produced significant holes in my education, which started to hurt when I became 19 years old. A straight-A student in a prestigious university, I expected myself to know things. Yet, I failed simple trivia questions my less distinguished friends could answer from psychology and history. Something needed to be done, and I addressed the issue in my typical head-on fashion. After getting my first degree, I found too much time on my hands and enough money to buy any book I wanted, and I started reading – seriously reading. Since the holes in my education included literature, history , and philosophy, I decided to fill them in. Eventually, as I gathered more information, my questions became more focused and the method could not satisfy me anymore. I started to work on my PhD and needed to read complex articles, which were just too boring to handle. I needed to look for information using this new search engine called Google (the year was 1999 ), and I needed to find basic principles which could explain and systematize the abundance of seemingly unconnected stuff I learned. I went through the articles I had already read, until one of them It’s always good to notice titles & headings to “prime” us on what we’re going to read. “chess champion” jumps out and creates lots of interest & questions. Was this person a chess champion? Why? How? Why is it in the second line of his story?! Numbers may or may not jump out at you. If they do, you might ask “what happened at 19? That’s a tough age!” Interesting choice of words. What does he mean by distinguished. Was he distinguished? Were his friends? How might he define distinguished and how does it connect to him and to his story? Would I agree with his definition? etc. Any of the topics here are worth noting, especially since they’re in the middle of the page. We can wonder how he got from chess champions to history - what’s the connection between them? Strangely formatted words always catch our attention - this is a good thing. Does our author have a PhD? In what? History? Philosophy? We almost always notice proper names. Interesting that Google and 1999 comes up here. Was our author working at Google when they launched? What, if anything, does Google have to do with his PhD? Is our author a technologist? © 2017 SuperHuman Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. http://becomeasuperlearner.com 4 interested me sufficiently to dive in. Then, I would “dive in” and reread the entire article. I met Anna the year I finished my PhD. She explained what she does, which is teach speedreading and comprehension. I told her I tried to do this myself, it did not work, and I did not believe in what she was doing. Needless to say, she had other assets that caught my attention, and it was not very long until we were married. Anna explained with the new method she teaches I would read much faster and remember EVERYTHING , no matter how boring or outdated and for as long as I needed to remember it. After approximately 10 weeks of training with Anna, I graduated the course ( 1000 wpm 80% retention ). I still felt I read very slowly, simply the timers did not to work properly when I was reading. I decided I should speed up a notch. To keep up with people around me, I needed to read a massive amount of articles. I was focusing on articles and details I could reuse in my future work. Currently, I am reading at approximately 3000 wpm with approximately 80% retention using several proprietary methods. Here is what I learned from years of training: (1) Each period of life comes with unique challenges As an effective tool to address these challenges, a reading strategy needs to be adapted. (2) How we learn is a matter of motivation , much more than the methods we use. (3) It is OK to leave gaps, or even huge holes in our reading, as long as we come back and fix them when we are ready. The moral of the story is I was able to fill in the gaps in my education, married a wonderful woman and together we continue to help others become SuperLearners . With the above principles in mind, the KeyToStudy method has grown and changed through the years to meet the challenges of an ever-changing society. Another proper name. Who is Anna? What is her relation to the author and to the story? This is the first time our author is introducing us to a proper name - why is this person first? They must be important in his life. The author clearly WANTS us to notice this. What does “everything” have to do with his story? Was everything good? Bad? Did everything fall apart? At this speed, we likely won’t know the context of the word everything, so we can generate all kinds of crazy questions. If we don’t know what wpm means, we may be intrigued and curious about it. If we do, we know that 1000 wpm is very very fast, and that will catch our interest or make us wonder how’s it’s possible or If he’ll explain how he does it here. Again, a very high number that can catch our attention and make us eager to know what the secret is behind such impressive numbers. Also, the difference between 1,000 and 3,000 can make us ask what happened in between. Emotional words like challenges and motivation are particularly pertinent because they tell us about the story arc and pique our curiosity... what were the challenges he faced? Motivation issues? Holes is a very strange word here. Why is it here? Is he talking about literal holes in the ground? Why did he choose this word and what are the holes in, if they’re metaphorical holes? This is the first time we encounter these two proper brand names with unique camel case capitalization. What are they? What do they mean? Why are they together so close? What’s the relation? © 2017 SuperHuman Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. http://becomeasuperlearner.com 5 © 2017 SuperHuman Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. http://becomeasuperlearner.com 6